CNN: Democrats worry that Obama needs to “get a spine” in VA scandal

posted at 10:01 am on May 26, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Allahpundit included this in his QOTD thread last night, but it’s worth a look on its own for its naked political hypocrisy. We’ve heard plenty from Republicans about Obama administration incompetence in the VA scandal. What we’re not hearing, at least so far, is Democratic outrage over the same incompetence. CNN’s John King told his panel yesterday that Democrats don’t want to say anything publicly, but privately they’re furious over Barack Obama’s lack of engagement and flat-footed response to nearly every crisis that arises (via Common Cents and TWS):

“Forget for a moment that Republican outrage,” said King on his CNN show this morning. “More and more Democrats in key 2014 races are calling for the president to get a spine, they say, and fire his Veterans Affairs secretary. And what more and more Democrats are saying privately is scathing, calling the president and his team detached, flat footed, even incompetent.

“Maggie Haberman,” said King turning to a panelist, “that’s what strikes me, what democrats are saying privately in the wakes of the healthcare.gov problems, they see a president who doesn’t want to take command, doesn’t want to act fast. Raising the competence question. Some Democrats, who believe in government, [are saying] this White House doesn’t appear to have its hand on the lever.”

Haberman of Politico agreed, cited more examples, and added: “All of this adds up to somebody who just doesn’t seem at all involved.”

It’s good to know that Democrats are offended by Obama’s incompetence and spineless response, too. But if that’s the case, then why is that outrage being expressed sotto voce? Is it more important to protect Obama from criticism than it is to take action to put an end to the crisis at the VA? If they’re admitting this privately, then the veterans at risk deserve better than the public silence that equates into tacit support for Obama’s lack of action at the VA.

There is no doubt that the VA’s actions were authorized by obama, as cost-saving measures – this was no failure of management or leadership – it was a carefully crafted and choreographed plan to extend wait times in order to let veterans die.

Uh, another scandal caused by gummint incompetence. The One’s response: “Road trip!” Reid will so be ANGRY, that he will respond by tabling (and/or vilifying and ignoring) the House bill designed to give more power (or, at least, political cover) for some mid level malefactors to be given the boot. Stay tuned.

Does this mean they want him to put on his big boy pants? Well Mom jeans or no that still doesn’t prevent him from continuing his woman parts thought processing. Progressivism is so complicated.
He really should come out about his own gender confusion. All his fascism aside, it’d still be a big move toward his base really.

I think everyone knows that Valerie is really the President and wields the power. Obama isn’t smart enough, the reason his college records are sealed. He’s a puppet because Valerie’s probably got the goods on him.

veterans at risk deserve better than the public silence that equates into tacit support for Obama’s lack of action at the VA.

The crux of the problem for the lazy stupid rat-eared wonder is that he’s cultivated an image of jumping in and getting stuff done despite DC gridlock.

He asked whose ass he needed to kick to solve the BP spill.

He thought nothing of weighing in when his racist Harvard buddy got treated like a real person and played the “do you know who I am” card.

He declared a worthless street thug the victim of a hate crime.

When it became clear that Congress would not give amnesty to a bunch of young illegals he did it by executive order.

He opted ignore the law and stop defending DOMA.

When the Obamacare website imploded, he called all hands to deck and threw millions more to get it semi-functional.

In fact the only time the filthy bastard isn’t quick to act is when there is a political downside for him. Fast and Furious, blacks intimidating voters, Benghazi……. all instances of stonewalling and ignoring Congressional oversight.

He is playing the same game with the VA but it isn’t working this time because it hits far too close to home for too many Americans. We want an all-hands-on-deck response and the rat-eared wonder is telling us we have to wait months until the VA is done investigating itself (at which point it will be determined there are isolated problems but not widespread corruption). That isn’t good enough.

There is a lesson in this for the GOP and TP. Ideological purity aside, there is the real job of managing, governing, and competence that is needed in a president. Whomever our side chooses has to be up for the job or his message will be lost in management failure.

Here’s the problem. Dems don’t want to publicly criticize Obama because they don’t want to damage their election chances by going against the leader of their own party. On the other hand, by not publicly criticizing Obama, they appear complicit. It’s a Catch-22 and I don’t envy them.

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” -John “Swift Boat” Kerry, American war hero

Is it more important to protect Obama from criticism than it is to take action to put an end to the crisis at the VA?

The Dems always have a reason to circle the wagons. In the case of Benghazi, it was to protect both Hillary for 2016 as well as Obama in 2012 who was running on the narrative of al-Queda being decimated. In the case of the IRS, it was to protect the entire Democrat Party which it’s been well documented in leaked e-mails was essentially giving Lois Lerner and other IRS employes their marching orders. And now with the VA scandal, the goal is to protect Obamacare. The optics of dozens(and maybe hundreds) of dead veterans due to long wait times at government-run health care facilities plus a cover up to hide it would cause the Obamacare favorability numbers to tank even further.

The real crime in all of this is the amount of destruction the Democrat/media complex will allow to occur in order to protect themselves and their agenda. We’re at the point where even dead bodies(including those of veterans) are acceptable collateral damage. God help us when we find out what they’re willing to tolerate in order to protect Obamacare.

So explain the 40+% approval rating for Obama.
At this point no one cares who or what Obama has done – nothing can be done about it. Those that try are shouted down as racists; the end of any discussion.
The Democrats may now think Obama is a failure of a President; but better a Democrat in power as a failure than a Republican. Having power is all that counts.

Obama is now a failed lame-duck President.
The only hope is that history records him as the worst President in modern times.

I remember reading something to this effect when we went through that 3000 page monstrosity way back in 2011 -2012 , for our businesses.
There are so many ” the sec shall determine” and similar crap all over jiziaCAIR , which have been purposely inserted to keep the chaos going for ever. That is exactly why it is a job killer because employers and companies will have no certainty about anything for any period of time . The instability is deliberately covered up with gibberish .

CNN’s John King told his panel yesterday that Democrats don’t want to say anything publicly, but privately they’re furious over Barack Obama’s lack of engagement and flat-footed response to nearly every crisis that arises.

Another admission that journalism is dead and active propaganda has replaced it.

Maybe they’re finally figuring out that Obama has been an incompetent empty suit from the beginning. The same can be said about Obamacare. Secretly, they know that all of the Republicans and more than half the nation were correct about Obamacare and that it wasn’t about healthcare but about government overreach and control.

I fear that Obama’s inactions, lack of spine and administrative abilities will soon be openly noticed in the arena of the racists. I fear that it will soon be the argument that if this is the best that can be produced then the Blackman is just not up to the task. If the racist argument can be used to deflect criticism then it will not be long before a false Blackman incapable is put forth to explain Obama’s failures. His greatest and most lasting legacy will be that he set back race relations in this country by 100 years.

The next two elections 2014 and 2016 will be about truth and veracity of the candidate and their party. It will be who tells the truth not just who are you told to believe.

These blind, lock step, shoulder to shoulder formations of the Democrats to defend lies, misdirections, and half truths should be easy targets. They are already running and hiding like the cockroaches that they are, from the light of truth.

Their privately expressed, off the record, quiet concerns about veterans dying so that incompetent hospital admins can get their annual performance bonuses is the absolute epitome of virtue.

After all, Democrats care.

Never forget just what it is that they care for.

Wanderlust on May 26, 2014 at 10:13 AM

This is classic behavior for the left. The Cause is much more important than holding your own leaders (and voters) to some standards of decency. We saw that with Strauss-Kahn, and all of his female sexual victims in Europe. You can be a sexist pig but the feminists won’t say a word and they’ll tell you to shut up about it.

It’s the same thing with any “value” that the left wraps itself in. Everything is fodder for The Cause.

Scott Johnson at Power Line…he’s not talking about this particular scandal, but his words do apply to it:

We have two-and-a-half years to go before Obama serves out his term and makes way for his successor. We are in the Killer Rabbit phase of his presidency, when the consequences of disastrous policies manifest themselves and pure cock-ups cannot be concealed. The president is Carterized; he becomes a figure of derision. He’s only holding the office down temporarily, but it’s a long, long way to temporary.

What makes Scott think O’bama is going to want to leave in two-and-a-half years?

I saw that last night linked on Drudge. Correct me if I’m wrong, but won’t employers just lay off a crapload of workers if this insane regulation is enforced? And yes, I know that Obama has made it illegal(or something to that effect) for employers to lay people off due to Obamacare, but all they have to do is say it was for some other BS reason to get around that. Bottom line is we’re looking at a freaking depression if employers can’t dump their workers onto the exchanges.

He the Obama man has a lot of spine when it comes to his domestic enemies. The GOP, Tea Party, NRA, etc. He has no problem lampooning them on his daily basis of fundraising. The man loves to “hate” these groups with his cronies. I will say it again I loathe this man and that includes his plain looking wife,,, trying to be polite.

Financier George Soros, who frankly affirmed in a 1998 interview on CBS News’s “60 Minutes” show that during his youth in Nazi-occupied Hungary, he assisted in the occupiers’ confiscation of property from Jews, continues to find business opportunities brought to him by Nazis.

BTW, did you know that Soros is now a part-owner of Halliburton? Thanks for playing!

“On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.” -Barry “Sixth Sense” Soetoro

The Democrats have said for years that opposition to Obama is based on his race. If this is true, are Democrats returning to their racist roots or could it be that they were stirring up racial animosity to maintain power?

How about the majority of Democrats in the Senate get together with the majority of Republicans in the House and fix the problem without Obama’s lack of help. This criticism of Obama’s lack of backbone only emphasizes their own lack of backbone and moral responsibilities. Finger pointing at a lame duck president during an election year is only another political ploy and means nothing. I understand that the House has sent at least ten bills to fix problems of the VA to the Senate, and Dingy Harry will not even bring them up. If the Democrats want to point fingers, they should look in the mirror.

I know you mean well, but you seem to be operating under the assumption that the Dem leadership is merely inept, rather than irredeemably corrupted by political self-interest and wholly disinterested in the well being of the republic.

It’s good to know that Democrats are offended by Obama’s incompetence and spineless response, too. But if that’s the case, then why is that outrage being expressed sotto voce? Is it more important to protect Obama from criticism than it is to take action to put an end to the crisis at the VA?

1.) It never really works for two parties to be running against the White House, especially for the party the person in the White House belongs to. For both the 2014 midterms and 2016, the Democrats know that if they run against Obama, even low-info voters are likely to decide the party Obama doesn’t belong to probably going to govern more to change things if they’re elected. So they have to at least keep their mouths shut on Obama and hope the low info voters will stick with him and them out of continuing to feel good about their own racial tolerance from having put Obama in the White House;

2.) While the Democrats are still supremely confident that women across America in 2016 are going to vote with their chromosomes for either Hillary or Liz Warren for president, they do know the turnout of African-American voters in 2010, between Obama’s two appearances on the ballot, dropped sharply, and is likely to be below the 2008-2012 levels in 2016, unless Hillary picks Corey Booker as her running mate. But even that won’t matter if she, Liz or anyone else is seen spending the next 29 months saying in public what they’re saying in private about Obama — after playing the race card 24/7/365 pretty much for the past 6 1/2 years since he officially started running for president, they can’t take a chance on attacking Obama and having that race card be thrown right back in their face by some of the Democrats’ own activists who would use it to try and build their own power bases.

Another admission that journalism is dead and active propaganda has replaced it.

iamsaved on May 26, 2014 at 11:17 AM

They don’t need to admit anything. From the Thornberry-Smith Amendment:

“Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors from engaging in any medium or form of communication, either direclty or indirectly, because a United States domestic audience is or may be thereby exposed to program material, or based on a presumption of such exposure. Such material may be made available within the United States and disseminated when appropriate, pursuant to sections 502 and 1005 of the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948.”

Surprisingly (shockingly I may add) the ACLU who loves all of us and are the necessary watchdogs of our precious Civil Liberties think it’s just spiffy:

i dont see how calling for my banning contributes much anything to the ‘discussion’.

ThisIsYourBrainOnKoch on May 26, 2014 at 12:03 PM

dlisa has a point. Your comments always look like spambot postings of sophomoric talking points. Your comments are just silly. They don’t generate any meaningful discussion.

Claiming that your fellow democrats are falling for a Koch brother narrative is pure stupidity. Do you really expect anyone to take this claim any more serious than claims that the moon landing was faked? My question for you is serious. Try to answer as a real commenter instead of as a troll.

I doubt that the Democrats’ main concern is protecting Obama. With the way that liberals eat their own and their rampant charges of racism against anything negative about The One, it would be political suicide to challenge Obama.